If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

TrueHD, DTS-HD, E-AC3 Over HDMI On Linux

11-25-2010, 09:30 AM

Phoronix: TrueHD, DTS-HD, E-AC3 Over HDMI On Linux

Here's another interesting bit of news that just arrived into the Phoronix inbox this Thanksgiving: it's now possible to do TrueHD, DTS-HD, and E-AC3 over HDMI on Linux via FFmpeg. The TrueHD/DTS-HD/E-AC3 support is added to one of FFmpeg muxers to allow HDMI pass-through for these formats. DTS-HD/DTS-HD MA audio up to this point hasn't been supported under Linux and it's used by a sizable portion of the Blu-ray media currently on the market...

Comment

I've only just worked out how to get my machine to decode regular old AC3 and DTS in software from an external source without passing it through. Seems I'm a generation behind! There's surprisingly little information about it around though. If everyone out there has fancy decoder boxes these days, it's news to me. I hope to write some software to make this a bit easier because switching from one codec to another currently requires manual intervention. It's not nice when my 360 suddenly switches from PCM to AC3 and I get a horrible noise.

Comment

We are in need of testers of TrueHD / DTS-HD passthrough (no ffmpeg patching needed).

To the best of our knowledge, only two people (me and Carl Eugen) have tested this so far, and it isn't working for one of them (Carl Eugen). We don't know why; we need more testers to figure out what is going on.

There are four different commands because there may be up to 4 HDMI codecs on board. Only one of them will work reliably, but it depends on the card and the HDMI port. Note that the files are only several seconds long; we are only interested in whether your receiver recognizes them.

Comment

great, i got TrueHD and DTS-HD movies + a receiver.
But an ATI graphic card, why should ATI users not test this?

___________________________
And other Question, DTS works fine for be, but suddenly some weeks ago AC3 passtrough broke and i dont know how to fix or debug this.
[AO_ALSA] Format ac3be is not supported by hardware, trying default.
But is was working, maybe the fglrx/ATI drive broke it?

Comment

It's cool to see this support, even though I have no intention of getting a bluray drive any time soon.

I second that. I don't know if blu-ray is having a good acceptance rate, but for me DVD already has pretty good image quality. I don't think there's so much difference as was the case when switching from VHS to DVD. The medium also takes up the same space (once again another big advantage for DVD over VHS), and they both have the same physical resistance. It probably only makes sense with a big ass TV, but even then I'm not sure if media streaming isn't more interesting than physical media. Oh, and then there's the question of the stupid name. Blu-Ray (what happened to the "e"? It seems one of those Kool names from the 80's)... a big advantage of CD and DVD names is that those work in any language. Blu-Ray is too anglicized and so not so universal as predecessor. Anyway, this news is actually good, since more functionality doesn't hurt